


Something we'll need to negotiate.

by a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words



Series: The Game [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Arguing, Bucky Barnes Gets a Hug, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky needs to be beaten and Steve needs to be needed, Consensual Kink, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Everything Is Fine Eventually, Fluff and Smut, Impact Play, M/M, Memory Loss, Smut, Spanking, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:18:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1646729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words/pseuds/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to What do you need me for? (As requested:  Steve spanking Bucky post Winter Solder/post serum.)</p><p>Bucky craves sensation, a balm to soothe the nostalgia and the shadow of the game makes him feel grounded in one time and place, here and now in the room with Steve. Not that he's sure he is Bucky, doesn't know what that means, but he knows that he wants to be Bucky, for Steve and for the possibility of a version of himself that exists outside of numbing pain and terror. He tries very hard to be Bucky for Steve, absorbing every bit of him he can remember, every sliver of information from every conversation, be it a memory or a mentioned characteristic, or the familiar smile that glazes Steve's face when he does something that is particularly reminiscent of Bucky.</p><p>Bucky wants something that Steve isn't sure he's willing to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something we'll need to negotiate.

**Author's Note:**

> (This depicts a fairly unhealthy initial relationship, as well as a degree of self harm. Be warned.)  
> So un-proof-read it's unbelievable.  
> Will make much more sense if you've read the prequel.

It isn't a game any more. Neither of them would call it a game.

It is a need.

Bucky craves sensation, a balm to soothe the nostalgia and the shadow of the game makes him feel grounded in one time and place, here and now in the room with Steve. Not that he's sure he _is_ Bucky, doesn't know what that means, but he knows that he wants to be Bucky, for Steve and for the possibility of a version of himself that exists outside of numbing pain and terror. He tries very hard to be Bucky for Steve, absorbing every bit of him he can remember, every sliver of information from every conversation, be it a memory or a mentioned characteristic, or the familiar smile that glazes Steve's face when he does something that is particularly reminiscent of Bucky.

Their tenement has been replaced by a two bed apartment in the Avengers' tower, because Bucky isn't safe anywhere else. The Winter Soldier isn't safe, there are people, HYDRA and others looking for him and waiting for one misstep on his part, before they'll gun him down or trap him and make him disappear until the next time they want someone dead.

So instead he is trapped in an apartment with Steve, trying pull his life into the present and more often than not, failing. He has a lot of past for someone with amnesia.

He remembers the game.

Steve won't play, won't feel with him for a long time. He begs for it, but when Steve looks at him he sees loss and trauma and a tragedy. He's played back every hypothetical series of events, more horrors than Bucky himself can remember, every beating he might have had, every experiment they could have done, every hand that may or may not have touched him.

He feels like an animal in a cage, and they don't even have the decency to hurt him whilst he's trapped here. It is... Infuriating.

Bucky breaks things, the TV and the couch and the windows, and Steve is infallibly gentle and patient with him. The frustration and guilt come out in a pathetic display of tears and shouting, and at the end Steve will hold him through it, but he doesn't _want_ Steve to put up with his shitty behaviour, he wants him to so something about it.

He runs away once, and Steve lets him go. A car crash and two days later he's back, and Steve lets him in like he went for a pint of milk and had an accident on the way.

Steve won't sleep with him, but then for years Steve had never slept with him – not like that – so it's not as much of a bad surprise. It's okay. He doesn't need the sex, the sex was the bonus. He can't _make_ Steve hurt him. But Steve won't sleep in a bed with him either. He doesn't ask why, just in case he doesn't like the answer. He thinks they did this before.

He hurts himself, once, waits until Steve is out and beats himself bloody with the cable to Steve's laptop and the intention of letting Steve know that he can't protect him just by not being the one to do it, to show him that he might as well give in for Bucky's own good. But afterwards when he can barely move, he feels awful, weak and manipulative, and the next two weeks are a hell in which he has to hide every trace of pain, worry about any slight glimpse of the dark, swollen bruising he's inflicted on himself.

Steve must know something is up, but he doesn't say anything.

Bucky considers the internet, where you can find anyone to do anything, but it's the fact that it's Steve which is important to him. He spends a lot of time sat on the couch with his eyes closed, ignoring everything. Often he doesn't know what he was thinking about afterwards, just drifts through the hours on reserve power until Steve begins to worry.

Steve compels him to socialise, and he sees Sam and Natasha with neither reluctance nor eagerness and anyone else after a great deal of convincing.

He is unsure why he is required to spend time in the presence of Tony Stark, not only because he finds the man aggravating, but because despite a smattering of hard-won respect, Stark clearly _disgusts_ Steve as well, the proud poster boy for everything Steve thought America would never become in a glistening 80 million dollar suit of armour and irresponsibility.

They have their first real argument, the first proper one where Steve is forced to say something back, because he can let Bucky break all of their things but he won't let that happen to Stark. It's an honour thing, since there's nothing Stark can't afford to replace, and they are friends by necessity and not by choice, and that is even more annoying because Bucky doesn't believe that _Anthony_ Stark deserves Steve's friendship, much less his respect.

By the time Bucky has broken the coffee table and Stark has, to his credit, expressed minor regret but also forgiveness, Steve is at the end of his tether.

“For goodness sake, Bucky, behave!” He shouts, and how can anyone behave surrounded by wealth like this? The rich don't behave, and Bucky has had it on good authority that Tony Stark doesn't behave very well at all. Except now, when he calmly steps back a few paces and leaves Steve to deal with his out of control house guest.

It's a recipe for smashed, superfluous crap. “Don't tell me how to act, you're the one who brought me here!” He snarls, dangerous, furious, misplacing decades of suppressed anger and fright.

“Bucky, calm down! What do you want me to do, damn well spank you?” Steve raises his voice again, and part of Bucky wants to shrink back from that. He knows shouting and threats of violence, knows them to be carried out. Fear leaches the strength from his legs and adrenaline replaces it at double speed. There's a long moment where programming competes with the things Sam and others have told him, with the things he knows must exist somewhere in old, dusty memories at the back of his mind. Run. Fight. Reason. React.

Steve must see it, can see it, because he looks conflicted too, but it's too late.

“How fucking dare you?!” Bucky feels the lining of his throat stinging as he all but bellows his rage in Steve's face. Then he drops his voice low, deadly, in a way that he would never have done to Steve in the time before. The voice of a killer, but this time the voice of someone who needs to communicate that this is not just another tantrum, that his pain is not misplaced. He has read about these things on the internet, read hundreds of resources meant for survivors of situations totally different but exactly the same as his. And maybe also as Steve's. “How dare you use that to control and humiliate me in front of other people!”

Steve looks stunned. Shamed, maybe. Bucky doesn't stay to find out, stalking past that smug, bemused, rich bastard and out of the building on his own terms for the first time since his last escape attempt.

Stark lives near the sea in a place Bucky only knows of because he drinks a lot of rum, not so far away that Bucky can't trudge half way to Santa Monica and take the bus to LA Airport. Stark had flown them in on his plane, and Bucky has no money beyond the change in his pocket and no where to go besides, but he's used to adverse situations and it isn't hard to sneak his way onto a domestic flight to New York.

His anger fizzles out as he walks back from the airport, but doesn't turn into self-blame. He's just tired. Exhausted. He wants to cry. He doesn't. It's not for other people to see.

By the time he makes his way into the building and opens the door to the apartment, Steve is already back, sitting on the couch in the dark with his forehead bent forward, resting on his palm.

“Wasn't sure you'd come back,” He says.

He could tell Steve that he would always come back, but even though he means it he won't give him the satisfaction right now. Steve is being punished. “There wasn't anywhere else to go.”

“Bucky, you're right,” Steve's face is hidden in shadow, but his voice is shaking. Bucky turns the light on. He isn't crying, just looks tired, hunched with one foot up on the couch, knee bent. “I shouldn't have done any of that. Shouldn't have used the fact that Stark was there to show you up.”

Bucky scrapes his teeth against his lips and simply stands there waiting for the apology to finish. To be good enough.

Steve brings his other knee up onto the sofa, shuffling until he occupies a cube of space not so much bigger than he used to be. And after a moment of increasingly uncomfortable silence, he stretches back out. Open posture. Open posture is a good sign, or his handlers and trainers believed it was. Open posture for a discussion, honesty, humility.

Steve strokes back his Captain-America-blond hair and sighs. “Never wanted to be the bully.”

It might have drawn him in once. Back when Steve was the furthest thing from a bully, he'd have flocked to defend him from his own self-accusations. But he is Recovering, and in Recovery he has learned things about the way people are, about the way he was trained. When you are made to pity the abuser and defend and rationalise them to their face. So he doesn't. He lets Steve take the fallout for his own behaviour.

 

_I didn't want to have to punish you, you understand?_

_Do you understand?_

_...Yes._

_Good. You give me no choice. I know I'm a horrible person for doing it, but I try my best by you._

_I know. It's okay._

_I deserved it._

 

Absolution.

“You messed up the game,” He says instead, and he wants to say defiled it, desecrated it, because the game is one of the few things he can really remember and that makes it sacred, the only thing, perhaps, that he remembers that was just for him and Steve. The words aren't cold, but they aren't desperate or sad. A statement of fact. He observes Steve like he observes everything, with no real emotional investment in the moment. Just interest, and a sense of attachment to the memory and concept of what Steve is.

“I did,” Steve admits. His eyes look wet. “I'm sorry. You know I have no right to threaten you with violence, right?”

It is strange for Steve to ask this. He knows, he's learned, he nods in response. He sits heavily down on the couch, letting the impact knock some of the air out of him, a few inches between him and Steve. Looks out the window, a great plane of glass and the city beyond. “I'm sorry too.”

He can feel Steve watching him. “What for?”

Bucky would shrug right now, the Bucky from before. Sheepish and humble, but cocky all the same. Sincere. Used to get him out of a whole lot of trouble as a kid. The Winter Soldier would submit himself for discipline, not even ask for leniency, accept punishment as necessity. Between the two of them, they must be honest, because all he can think to say is the truth. “For being bad to you.”

And it's Steve who falls for it, Steve who always fell for kindness on his person, however false, but could spot a fake apology a mile off when it was directed at someone else. Steve wants to touch him, to reach out and reassure, but he's weary of it, so he just edges a little closer on the couch and Bucky permits it. “You know that's not true. You aren't bad to me.”

Bucky-from-before still tallies on Bucky-from-the-present's list of sins and good deeds for Steve. When Bucky breaks his favourite vase, it's okay because Bucky seventy nine years ago spent his five cents pocket money on food because Steve's mom was too poor to afford both the rent and three meals a day some weeks. He isn't Bucky-from-before, he is an imposter, a ghost running on leftover good will earned by somebody else. “Yeah I am. I break your stuff, I shout at you. I ran away. I hurt your feelings.”

Steve frowns like he needs to protect Bucky from his own admissions. “It's not your fault, Buck. You've been through a lot. A whole lot you should never have had to go through.”

Bucky shakes his head. It's all wrong. He's Steve's protector, not the other way around. But he has nothing more to say, so instead he bumps himself up against Steve's side. It's his left arm, his metal arm, but it's contact.

He rests his hand palm up on the couch between their thighs, and Steve looks at it for a long moment before taking it without further hesitation. He wonders what this is like for Steve, the arm, but it's his body as it is now, and he's come to accept it. It is a tool to him. He remembers snippets of the old Bucky grooming, biting his lips and pouting for girls and not caring if they knew he was doing it on purpose, and secretly styling his hair before he stepped into the apartment so that Steve wouldn't find out that he made effort to look this way for him. That's not the body he has any more. But he still likes touching Steve, even in this body.

He can't feel a lot of sensation in his left hand, just the contrast of roughness and smooth, hot and cold. No pain or pleasure, nothing intricate or not related to the function and well-being of the arm, but his brain fills in the gaps, the soft skin, delicate bones. He knows he's superimposing Steve's old, littler hands on his newer, more powerful ones, and he doesn't care. He misses those hands.

Bucky disentangles their hands and puts his arm around Steve's shoulders instead. Lets Steve lean into him. He can remember doing this, the smell of it, remembers a smaller body sneaking a hand behind his back, a lighter head resting beside his ear. Steve doesn't let them have a lot of contact any more. They haven't had sex or shared a bed or really gone beyond their initial reunion hug, when Bucky had barely known who Steve was beyond what the museum could tell him. He thinks they used to hug a lot. Hellos, goodbyes, I'm-here-for-yous. Never coincided with the collision of bodies, not really. Maybe afterwards, after the game, if he was crying. Steve would play at being a bigger spoon than he really was.

Now, Steve is indeed the bigger of the two, a sickly boy wearing a hundred and forty pounds of pure muscle and good health. But he still turns in towards Bucky, puts his arms around him, slumping down on the sofa so that his head comes only to the point where it always did.

The irony of course, is that Bucky needs him more than ever. Steve's need in that department is fulfilled. It's Bucky left wanting. He kisses Steve's face, his brow and his cheek, rests his lips against the smooth skin and feels powerful muscle underneath, smells Steve's twenty-first century smell and tastes salt on his lips, just a little. His eyelids are what they used to be though, delicate, with long pale lashes, quivering and fluttering as Bucky kisses over them.

It takes some squirming around for them to get comfortable, for their new bodies to fit together. It messes up the couch. He likes it, likes Steve, likes the closeness, wants to drink it in as though it can make up for decades spent apart. Maybe it can.

Steve strokes his chest through his t-shirt, tracing out muscles and ribs like landmarks. He kisses Bucky's throat. “You still think about it? All those times we...” He doesn't have the words, doesn't have a name for The Game. “Those times I...”

He strokes Steve's soft blond hair, fingering it at the nape of his neck. “You know I do. Times we made love.”

Steve pulls his head back to look up at him, frowning in that way he does. Always so concerned for others, even when he can't take care of himself. He bites his lip, and Bucky frees it from his teeth with his right hand, thumbing over it gently. “I couldn't mark you up like that again,” Steve tells him, and Bucky knows he means it, for whatever reason. Psychological, health and safety. It doesn't really matter, because it isn't going to happen.

“Then don't.” They lock eyes for a second time, and he knows Steve has given in.

He gets up from half in his lap, pulling Bucky up with him. Takes him through to the bedroom, his bedroom, their bedroom. Bucky won't leave Steve's bed after the fact.

They both struggle out of their clothes, kicking them into piles around the room that Steve will tut at in the morning, until they're bare, naked together for the first time in a long time.

They're two different people, standing there now, but they have the same needs. The same desires. It's the same game, but they take it more seriously.

Steve sits down on the bed, legs hanging off the edge, and Bucky straddles them. Neither of them are particularly hard, there's too much resting on this, but it's Steve. It's okay.

Steve strokes him, running hands over his back and chest and belly, tracing scar and regular skin alike and pressing on thick new muscle where there was soft outline before. Kisses his shoulder, the ragged join of metal and meat.

Bucky pushes away and lays himself down across Steve's lap. Their cocks touch, and it's nice. He doesn't think he often had access to Steve's body like this. They're both warm where they touch, all flushed skin and anticipation.

Steve slides his fingers over Bucky's ass, nails catching ever so slightly on a faint scar going from top to bottom of his right cheek. It tingles, and the knowledge that Steve is there and touching him is finally solidifying in his mind for the first time in months. Decades. More than half a century. He shifts against him, hardening a little. Steve's other hand rubs over his back, pushing against tense muscle and the knobs of his spine.

Steve spreads his cheeks and tuts at a lingering bruise, and Bucky blushes because he knows that Steve knows.

“You've earned this,” Steve tells him. It is a reward. Then he brings his palm down on his left cheek with a loud smack.

Bucky sighs, lets his body go boneless for the beginning of his punishment. The pain is not so great that he has to react, that he needs to do more than lie there and revel in it. It's nothing like when he'd whipped himself weeks before, bruising pain but no real sensation. A sharp sting that lasts a few seconds but sends a jolt through his body that he can feel echoed in Steve.

Steve slaps him again on the other side, and then builds up a gentle rhythm. Left, right, left. Lower cheek and then the top of his thigh, a building heat. Steve's hands are bigger than they used to be, great paddles he wields at nowhere near full strength. Bucky can take it, twists and revels in it, gasping at the accumulation of blows as Steve smacks the same spot again and again. His cheeks don't bruise except for where dark shadows linger from before, just glow red with the heat.

It takes several minutes before he's really struggling, before the hand on his back is the hand holding him down and the pain is a hot, raw sting. Steve doesn't go harder or faster, just keeps up the pace, and the gentle rhythm from before is now a relentless one.

He groans and claws at the sheets, trying his hardest not to damage them with his metal hand a Steve spanks his upper thigh to match the other one. Their cocks bump against one another, hard and slick with sweat and precum, and Bucky lets himself grind into it as Steve pushes his legs further apart.

He smacks his inner thighs until Bucky whispers, “Please,” without knowing what he's asking for, and then slaps his perineum instead. Bucky jerks against him, thrusts with each forceful sensation and his left hand makes a fishnet of the sheets. “ _Please._ ”

That big, paddle of a hand hits his ass again, big enough to go over both cheeks. Still not hitting so hard, but hitting for so long that salt tears are running down Bucky's face and he can lick them from his upper lip.

Steve pauses for a moment, leaning over him to ask, “Please what? Tell me what you want me to do, Buck.”

He pushes his knuckles against Bucky's perineum again, massaging his prostate through the scarlet skin. “I don't know,” His voice sounds small and broken, and he likes it. “Hit me there.”

Steve slides him off of his lap until Bucky is instead straddling one thigh, leant forward over the bed behind him. He can still feel Steve's dick against his hip, hard and longer than it used to be. Thick. Then Steve opens his legs wide, pinning them out with his own.

“Remember that you asked for it,” Steve tells him, and brings his hand down over his hole.

Bucky whines, drenched in sweat as Steve alternates between hitting his asshole, perineum and the insides of each cheek. “Fuck!”

“Yes,” Steve groans, slapping him until he can't tell one blow from the next and air catches in the spit in his throat causing him to swallow loudly. He catches the back of Bucky's balls on purpose, just a light slap and a quick squeeze.

“I'm gonna –” He begins, too late, because one more smack over his hole and he spills himself onto Steve's thigh with a cut off moan.

Steve stops hitting and he lies there, panting for a moment, before he sits up on Steve's leg. His cheeks feel hot, and embarrassingly wet, but both of them are sheened with sweat and Steve is smeared with his cum from thigh to hip.

Bucky pushes himself backwards of Steve's knee, grateful for cool air on abused skin and slides down between his legs.

“Can I?”

Steve nods and flops backwards in the bed, letting Bucky stroke and lick him before taking him in his mouth. It's clumsy, he's only done this a handful of times and he isn't sure that all of them were with Steve, but the taste is how he expects it to be, the weight and the texture are how he remembers them. There's one place where Steve still smells the same. Steve cranes his head to wipe tears and snot off Bucky's face with a corner of the ruined sheet, giving a shuddering sigh as Bucky swallows him down.

Bucky pauses a moment to spit on his fingers and then to trail them through his own cum before pressing them inside behind Steve's balls, into the hot ring of muscle and up, slick and filthy with Bucky's semen.

Steve groans and pushes down on Bucky's right hand, and Bucky sucks his head into his mouth again, lapping with his tongue and suckling on it hard. It doesn't take long, Steve was practically past the point of no return to begin with. His thighs shake and his voice rises in his throat as he fucks himself into Bucky's and goes rigid on the bed.

Bucky swallows because he has to and then pulls himself away, wiping his fingers on the sheet.

 

 

The bathroom is very mirrored now. Bucky can see the red of his ass and thighs from all angles, the tiny pinprick bruises that Steve couldn't help from causing in the places he'd spanked him hardest. It makes his cock fill again and his chest feel as warm as those cheeks.

He smells of their old smell and smiles, feeling as though he's found some part of himself again. Some key to sensation.

“Thanks,” Is all he can say to Steve when he joins him in the bathroom.

Steve ruffles his hair and shoves him out of the way to the sink, unusually smug like he always was once he'd “won” the game. “You're welcome.”


End file.
